


In Illo Tempore

by l_cloudy



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempts at historical accuracy, F/M, Time Travel, a less rosy take on the timetravel kc trope, caroline holds her own, the originals aren't nice, updated REALLY slowly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7172870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world ends on a Tuesday. Caroline goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horsecrazy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horsecrazy/gifts).



> This is a few years old, so the writing may reflect that - but then again, I'm most posting this so that _someone_ can see it.
> 
> Story picks up after 4x22.

The world ended on a Tuesday.

As weekdays went, Caroline figured it could have been worse. It wasn’t as cliché as a dying on a Monday morning, not as lame as not surviving the weekend, not really as annoying as dropping dead on a Friday night. No, Tuesday was more than okay – except for, you know, the dying part; especially when she’d been counting on being around for a long, _long_ time. Sometimes fate really was a bitch.

It all started innocently enough, at two in the morning in a Manhattan bar where Caroline was busy sipping on a Blue Angel and flirting subtly across the room with the guy who’d send it over – a coy smile here, a wink there, but nothing too obvious. She was, after all, spoken for – by a guy who’d gone and disappeared, okay; but Tyler was still her boyfriend, and Caroline knew she wouldn’t go any further than smiles, glances, and sexual frustration.

“Oh, I know that look, doll,” Brady called, appearing next to her. “Who’s getting his heart broken tonight?”

“Maybe you are,” she retorted. “Where did your cute grad student go, anyway?”

Brady winked. He was handsome, not quite in that intense, tortured-soul sort of way she was used to, but rather just plain _hot_ , with his leather jacket and bronze skin and tattooed guitarist fingers, to the point that sometimes Caroline was almost tempted to say _to hell with everything_ and just go for it. Him. Whatever.

“He went home, I guess,” he said, following Caroline’s gaze to Blue-Angel-guy, playing darts in a corner. “Sleeping off the blood loss.”

“And now I’m all alone, and all yours.”

She had to laugh at that. “Cheers!”

Brady was from New Zealand, not quite a century old, and with a proclivity for frowning that reminded her of Stefan. He’d been living in New York for a couple of years, and had self-appointed as Caroline’s tour guide only a couple of day after they’d first met, on the first week of her summer vacation – or, as Caroline liked to call it, the first day of the rest of her life.

She’d gone to New York because she’d never been, and because why the hell not. Bonnie was on her extended family holiday, Stefan had dropped off the radar, Tyler MIA, Elena lost in her honeymoon bliss – and poor little Caroline was at home with her mom, making plans to set up her dorm room and the rest of the human life she’d have to pretend through.

And so she’d packed and went on a road trip, because if even Elena had been outside of Virginia – _Elena Gilbert_ , who’d only ever wanted a boring life – then Caroline had really no excuses. As road trips went, though, hers hadn’t been much of one. She’d gotten to New York and decided to stay a while – after all, she had all the time in the world – and then she met Brady at that vampire bar Damon had told her about, and the rest was history.

Theirs was an easy friendship, a casual thing made of chance encounters and convenience, so different from the fire-forged bonds she had with her friends back home. There was nothing life-or-death about Brady; and Caroline hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that simplicity until they’d met.

“Okay, so,” he began. “Tomorrow, I was thinking this Thai place I know. You haven’t tasted real Thai until you’ve been at Decha’s –”

“– or to Thailand,” she quipped in.

“Or, been to Thailand,” he conceded. “But that’s kinda far.”

She found herself smiling at him. He really _was_ cute, almost enough to make her give up on a relationship she’d put so much in, but Caroline Forbes was anything but a quitter, even if Tyler forgot to call _all the time_ and barely even answered and – _ugh_.

“Caroline,” Brady’s amused voice brought her back to reality. “Don’t look now, but that guy is coming over here. How about a strategic retreat?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, enthusiastically. “Let’s.”

They were barely out of the bar when Brady fell over, dead.

***

The end of the world began on a Tuesday, at two in the morning, as Brady Patel slumped down in a back alley and fell over, skin grey as ashes and a trickle of blood running from his mouth.

Technically, Caroline would learn later, the end of the world had been going on for almost thirty-two hours by then, starting with Silas and a coven of New Orleans witches and ending up with a vampire-induced wave of mass suicides on Tuesday afternoon; but she didn’t know that yet. There and then, Caroline’s first reaction was panic.

She knew what Brady’s death meant. She’d seen Sage’s corpse, after all, saw her stumble and fall over and die in the exact same way and if Brady was dead _like that_ then –

The originator of Brady’s bloodline, whoever it was, had died just over an hour ago.

Caroline ran. She let Brady’s body where it was, flashing away in a blur – _you shouldn’t run like that around here, Caroline,_ Brady had told her on the first day, _too many cameras around_ , but it was an emergency and someone would find thousands of vampires’ bodies in the morning and _to hell_ with caution.

Her hotel room was too far, so she just broke into the first apartment she saw, searching for clothes – heels and cute black dress wouldn’t cut it, not now. Thanks god she’d rented a parking spot out of town, because driving through it would take too damn long, and Caroline had never let Tyler teach her how to hotwire a car ‘just in case’.

 _I will_ , she told herself. _First thing, tomorrow morning._

If she lived that long.

Caroline found her car and hopped in, driving like crazy towards Mystic Falls, wondering all the while if she would even make it that far, wondering if she was going to die. She clutched her phone in her hand, dialling Tyler’s number – _pick up pick up pick up_.

He didn’t.

Sage had only lasted one hour after Finn’s death, and so had her friends – but _why_ one hour? Caroline had never bothered to find out. Did all vampire just drop dead at the same time, or the eldest ones died first? “Gee,” she whispered to herself. “Think happy thoughts, Forbes.”

In the meanwhile, she tried Tyler again.

 _Pick up pick up pick up_.

She called Elena next, then Damon – a ring and another and another; no voice on the other side. Was that…good? Bad? She tried her mom next, but Liz had been picking up all the night shifts lately, because the pay was better and Whitmore expensive. Tyler again. _Pick up the damn phone_.

As she drove, Caroline tried not to think of the fact that one of the Originals must be dead.

She had no idea how what could have happened, and how. Rebekah was out of the country – hell, she was out of the country with Matt, of all people, planning to do nothing more dangerous than going to see the Wall of China – and Klaus and Elijah were in Louisiana, under no threats that she knew of. None of them would have died easily.

 _Especially not Klaus_ , she thought; but then again, if Klaus had died so would she. And wasn’t that an awful thought, but almost as bad was mourning the future that never would be, the endless possibilities of what might have happened. Brady’d had a century on her, given or taken a decade or so, and if whatever it was that killed him moved through the bloodline, she figured she would know it pretty soon.

But Caroline did not want to know. She did not want to crawl in a corner and wait to die like the helpless little girl she no longer was, she had to _do_ something, and hope it wasn’t too late. She ditched her car on the side of the road close to a rest area and snatched herself a new one, the fastest-looking she could see in the parking lot, driving away without a hint of regret as the cell phone rang and rang and rang.

 _Pick up_ , she thought. _Pick up, pick up._

 _Pick up_.

Come dawn, Tyler still hadn’t picked up the phone, but Caroline wasn’t dead.

***

She arrived in Mystic Falls to see a witch waiting on her doorstep.

“Caroline Forbes,” the woman said, slowly, giving her a smile that was nothing if not predatory. “Remember me?”

Caroline remembered Lucy Bennett, of course. How could she not?

She had been sitting on her porch, tapping lightly on the grass with one foot, arms crossed under her chest. Impatient. Lucy was staring at Caroline like she just turned up late for some important appointment, which – _no way_. Not after she’d driven all the way from New York City like a madwoman, and getting almost arrested once or twice.

“Miss Forbes,” she repeated, more harshly, standing up. Not rude, but straight to the point, a woman on a mission. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” Caroline swallowed, and whatever temporary calm she’d managed to regain during her drive went away under Lucy’s intense scrutiny. She didn’t believe in coincidences, and a long-lost Bennett witch turning up in Mystic Falls the same day one of the Originals died was enough to make her more than wary.  “You’re… Bonnie’s cousin, right?”

“Right,” she nodded. “And you are Bonnie’s vampire friend. We need your help.”

That sounded like a cliché action movie one-line if she’d ever heard one, and Caroline was about to make a quip when she realized the full impact of Lucy Bennett’s words. “We,” she repeated. “As you and…?” Bonnie’s cousin she might have been, but if there was something Silas had taught them all was that not all witches were as good as they liked to pretend.

But Lucy was staring just above her shoulder, and Caroline turned around to see Elijah standing right behind her, looking even more solemn than usual.

It hit her then that Rebekah must be dead.

“Silas,” he said, reading the questions in her eyes. “I heard he got her to come back from Dublin and then–”

Caroline looked at the man in front of her, this proud immortal with shaky hands and an even shakier voice, and sat down on the porch, slowly.  She had never really talked to Elijah, has never even been in the same room as him, but even she could tell that he looked desperate and on edge and downright murderous.

Murderous, she couldn’t help but notice, and defeated. Like some part of him has already given up; and that scared her most of all. She wondered how Klaus must be – and where _the hell_ was Klaus?

“I’m sorry,” she head herself say. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Caroline had never cared much for Rebekah Mikaelson before. With her blonde hair and blue eyes and bitchy smiles, the Originals had always seemed to Caroline like a prettier, stronger, _better_ version of herself; and in her needy attitude Caroline had always seen an echo of the insecure, pathetic girl she’d been, once – the girl she so desperately wanted to forget.

And still she couldn’t – couldn’t help but look at Rebekah, beautiful and fearless and so very bitter, so capricious and jealous and cruel, and see a reflection of the woman she might become, someday, embittered by centuries of loneliness and heartbreak and never being the first choice and – god, it had always been so much easier to hate her.

Elijah acknowledged her words with a nod, and Caroline found herself wondering if he even believed she’d meant it. _I do_ , she wanted to assure him, _so much_ , because Rebekah was the same kind of lost girl that she was, a nervous wreck of loneliness and need, and Caroline wanted to scream that she understood, she’d been like that once, too, and her greatest fear had been that no one would cry for her when she’d be gone.

“So, Silas,” she said instead, standing up again – and as calm as you please, even though she was dying inside. “How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know the specifics,” he answered. “And, to be quite frank, I don’t care. He wants the veil lowered again, I assume, found some loophole or another, and enlisted the help of  a few powerful witches in exchange for the promised to rid the world of vampires.” His lips twitched slightly in what had to be the driest smile Caroline had ever seen, and she understood – that’d been Esther’s plan all along, brought to completion by the monster they himself had woken up.

“He has the White Oak stake,” Elijah added, unnecessary as it was, “and… no qualms about using it.”

His voice was flat, and Caroline flashed back to that day in Elena’s living room, a charred body on the floor, and Klaus’s empty eyes.

She felt guilty all of a sudden, but couldn’t deal with it; not right now. “And you need _me_ ,” she said, not bothering to hide her scepticism. She most definitely didn’t want to bury her head under the sand and wait to die, but she didn’t think she could be much help against _Silas_ , either. “How?”

Lucy laughed.

Caroline threw her an annoyed look because, _hey_ , it was good to see that Lucy seemed to agree with her – but there were nicer ways to go about it. Elijah was more diplomatic about it; and she could almost see why Elena liked him so much.

“Truth be told, we came here looking for Miss Bennett, for some help with the spell –” he began, not saying which spell, or what it was for, and Caroline privately wondered if there even _is_ a spell that will work at this point. “And for Mister Salvatore, and Elena, for… other parts.”

“Bonnie left with her mom,” Caroline explained – _and won’t take even a stupid call_. “And I think Elena and Damon might have gone to the lake house,” and she told herself that for once she didn’t much care that she’d been once again chosen second after Elena, because it was _Elijah_ doing the choosing, someone she didn’t even know. She tells herself it didn’t sting, even when it did. Because, seriously, what did Elena have that Caroline did not – against _Silas_ , of all people?

Lucy’s voice shook her from her reverie.

“That’s a pity, Elijah,” she said, like Caroline wasn’t even _there_. How the hell did they know each other, anyway? “But you know we’re on a schedule here. She will do.”

End of the world alright, but she’d never really learned how to keep her temper under control.

“Excuse me.” Caroline’s voice sounded closer to a bark, even to her own ears. “Would you terribly mind explaining me what the fuck you’re talking about?”

The witch rolled her eyes and suddenly Elijah was standing right in front of her, way too close for comfort, looking at her with something she could only describe as fascination – like she was some code he needed to crack, some dismantled mechanism he wanted to put back together. Caroline stared back, refusing to let herself be intimidated.

“I see why my brother was so fond of you,” he said then, slowly, whatever the hell that meant. _Was fond of you_ , sure – more like obsessed, and stalker-ish, and maybe, just maybe, _someday…_ but it didn’t matter, not right now.

“You will help us now,” Elijah continued, “won’t you?”

And his question managed to sound more like a thread, but Caroline didn’t particularly care. She froze, replaying Elijah’s words in her mind – and the one that’d caught her attention, brought back all the nagging thoughts she’s been trying to ignore since everything began. _I can see why my brother was so fond of you_.

“ _Was_?”

And now she just –

 _No_ , Caroline thought, taking a step back. _That’s impossible_.

Elijah didn’t say anything at first, that defeated look back in his eyes – and _how_ could one man look so distraught? It was almost painful to watch. It wasn’t a confirmation, but close enough. “Is Klaus…” she needed to stop and take a breath. “Is he dead?”

Because Klaus _couldn’t_ be dead. He’d been around forever and always would be, like a particularly annoying constant of life. Klaus was… _Klaus_ , her affectionate stalker and former enemy and uneasy ally, and he knows everything and can do anything and he. Could not. Be dead.

Elijah closed his eyes; and when he reopened them he looked perfectly composed again _. How does he do it_ , she wondered – an wasn’t fun, how she still had an eye for details at a moment like this? “Not yet,” he said. “But Silas has him. He will be soon enough.”

“And you’re _here_?” her outburst surprised her. She didn’t even _like_ Klaus, the annoying, murderous bastard, the impossible man she couldn’t bring herself to forget. The last love of her life, he’d promised her; and, for all of Caroline’s protests, she has grown fond of the idea, in the back of her mind, that one day – no matter where or when – they would find each other. Eternity was such a long time, after all, and everything was possible – and now, all was gone.

“Your brother is dying,” she repeated, and didn’t really care that her voice was staring to crack, eyes prickling; and she didn’t know why. “And you’re _here_?”

And then she realized, it didn’t matter if Klaus died, because soon enough she would be dead, too. And Tyler, and Elena, and Stefan, the lot of them –  and tears fell through her face, for whom she didn’t know. For Klaus, perhaps, or for herself; for the people she’d leave behind or for the ones who would follow her in death.

In all that, Elijah was _smiling._ Maybe he’d had enough and flipped for good, Caroline thought. The man was clearly as crazy as the rest of his family – only they were all dead now, weren’t they? No family left.

But he did not look like a madman. Desperate, perhaps, and clinging to his sanity by the tips of his fingers, but more than anything he looked determined. “I pick my battles, Miss Forbes” it’s all he said. “With Silas, I could lose. I probably would. Here and now…” god, that smile was _terrifying_.

“Here I’m going to win.”

***

Elijah spun her a wonderful, mad story as he drove her car to the outskirts of town, Lucy frowning in the backseat, and Caroline almost wondered if maybe Rebekah’s death hadn’t sent him over the edge, because this plan – this story was _crazy_. Except that she’d seen an immortal being opening a portal between the world of death and that of the living, so she could see Elijah’s point, kind of.

The Original parked the car next to the mansion. She’d thought Klaus would have closed up the house before moving to New Orleans, but there were no white sheets on the furniture when they came it, and Lucy seemed to know her way around like she’d been here before. Caroline barely paid her attention, trying to make sense out of Elijah’s words.

“So, time travel,” she said, not really deadpanning but close enough because, _seriously_? Okay, there was a veil to the Other Side and the world might have been ending, but this was almost too weird. “ _That_ is what you’re going with?”

“Indeed,” Elijah answered, cool enough to be downright scary. Next to him, Lucy had started on – whatever she was going to do, with chanting and burning candles and that creepy rapture-y look she’d come to know so well. Caroline’s eyes went from the witch to Elijah, looking as though he could have been made out of stone, and she swallowed.

“Right,” she continues. “And you need me, why?”

“Guidance,” he told her, still as vague as always – and, _wow_ , she would have almost felt flattered if she hadn’t known for a fact that she’d been Elijah’s last resort for the whole thing, coming in even after Damon-fucking-Salvatore. And, Damon had one century and a half on her, but he just sucked at planning. Klaus would have known that – but Klaus wasn’t there now, was he?

“You will help us avoid this – situation,” Elijah continued, and there he made a face, raising one eyebrow just the right way to convey as much distaste as possible.

“Right,” Caroline repeated, feeling really out of her depth. She eyed Lucy sideways, but the woman was still busy with her spell, mumbling and whispering and looking like she wouldn’t have noticed if the building went out in flames. “So, time travel,” she repeated. “That’s… actually possible?” Caroline found it hard to believe that Klaus hadn’t tried anything like it before.

“Theoretically, yes.”

It was Lucy – out of her trance or whatever it had been, looking sweaty and sick and just plain awful, dark circles under her eyes. “Esther thought it could be done –” and of course they would bring up Esther, how predictable. “But it’s dangerous, and requires… much power.”

Caroline had a pretty good idea of what _power_ could mean,  for all that she’d have preferred to forget. Sometimes, with her eyes closed, she could almost hear Klaus’s voice in her head – _twelve grave for twelve witches, like it never happened_.

“Twelve more minutes,” Lucy added, nodding at Elijah before rubbing her hands against her face, closing her eyes. She looked sick – not just tired, like Bonnie often did whenever she tackled a particularly hard spell, but honest-to-god sick, like someone who’d just been through a long stint in a hospital. _Or a zombie_ , Caroline added to herself.

“So, power,” she told Elijah. “That’s… sacrifices, right?” Her voice didn’t tremble as he nodded, not even a bit. And, as much as she wouldn’t have wanted to admit this in front of her mother, if Caroline had to pick between the almost total annihilation of the vampire race, herself and her closest friends included, and the deaths of some random, faceless people she’d never met…

Only, there was a distinct lack of future sacrificial victims around the house.

“How many people?” she heard herself ask, as if she were discussing the weather – _cloudy, with a good chance of a storm_.

“Hopefully enough,” Elijah said. “Don’t worry, Miss Forbes. They won’t be dead where you’re going.”

 _Where you’re going_. But why her, even if it was too late to get Elena or Damon. Why not… “Why don’t you go?” she asked Elijah, and he gave a surprised blink in her direction, looking almost human. “I mean, wouldn’t that make things simpler?”

He just _stared_ at her for what felt like forever, as the second dragged on and Klaus – and Caroline – got one minute closer to death. “That would make things... complicated,” he Elijah said, eventually. “But this way, you’ll rewrite history. It will be as if all this had never happened.”

“And what about me?” Caroline felt suspicious all of a sudden. Sure, Elijah might look classy and Elena might like him, but he was still an Original, professional backstabber and survivalist. To him, someone like Caroline Forbes must be nothing but collateral damage. “Won’t there be two of me running around?”

 _And won’t Klaus would like that,_ some forgotten, sarcastic corner of her mind muttered. _Just enough of me to go around to make everyone happy_.

“I can guarantee, Miss Forbes,” there was the barest hint of a smile on Elijah’s lips. “That where you’re going, there won’t.”

“Six minutes,” Lucy cut in, shivering violently. She truly looked terrible, reminding Caroline of a desiccated vampire – and she realized, suddenly, that Lucy Bennett wasn’t meant to survive this spell.  Was she the sacrifice? Somehow, it didn’t seem nearly enough.

“How many people?” she asked again, harshly this time. Caroline didn’t want to know, god she didn’t – but she had to.

Elijah didn’t meet her eyes, why she’d never know. “The New Orleans witches captured Niklaus and delivered him to Silas two days ago,” he begins. “Rebekah died yesterday. In the meantime… I made about three hundred vampires, and instructed them.”

 _Instructed them_. He meant compelled – to do what? To kill people, all at the same time? But not, that couldn’t be it. Even she knew enough about Elijah to expect him to do something more subtle than sending out blood-crazed new-born vampires to slaughter the masses.

“Four minutes.”                                                                          

And then, she knew.

“To kill humans?” Elijah shook his head. “To compel humans then….” Caroline said, eyes widening. “To… die at the same time?” Three hundred vampires, one entire day. How many people wold die in four minutes? Thousands, tens of thousands? As many as there were vampires left in the world? “To compel humans to kill themselves… at the same time.” And probably in some crazy ritual that would help their spell and god that was just _sick_ –

And then, just as Elijah started to nod, Caroline felt the world spin all around her.

There was hard wood against her cheek and  blood in her throat and blood in her mouth and Caroline could almost feel her body shutting down. Dying – but then again, she’d been living on borrowed time to begin with. An undead parasite. _Death’s catching up_ , she thought. But it couldn’t be. It had only been one year, and she’d been promised forever…

 _A day, or a century_.

She knew what was happening.

“Klaus’s dead, isn’t he?”

Had been dead for a while now, and she hadn’t known. How odd. Klaus’s death had always seemed like it would be such a life-changing event, even back before they’d known he would take them all with him to the grave – and still Klaus had just gone like that, slipping away quietly; and she hadn’t felt any different, and neither had Elijah.

Klaus Mikaelson had died, and the world still gone on.

“Be delicate,” Elijah was saying, “she might not survive if she makes it back too early, it has to be after, but just immediately –”

“What are you talking about?” Caroline asked, or tried to – it came out as a sort of mumble, and she tried desperately to remember how long it had took Sage to die. Three minutes left to... whatever that was. She could last three more minutes.

She had to.

“Elijah,” she tried to look up at him, slumped on the floor as she was, caught a glimpse of hard eyes and lips pressed into a thin line. “Elijah, what is it?”

Elijah did not answer, but suddenly he was crunched on the floor next to her as Lucy started to chant once again, eyes trailed on hers as he took her head in his hands, brushing her sweaty hair away from her face. “Miss Forbes,” he said, not unkindly. She would remember that in the centuries to come; because it was the only kindness this Elijah Mikaelson ever showed her.

“Caroline. Look at me.”

And when she did, she found that she could not look away.

 _Oh please not_ , she thought, the hopeless pleas of a helpless little girl, a human, weak and fleeting – and _shallow_ , and useless.

 _Not again, please;_ but Elijah’s eyes were so mesmerizing, pupils unnaturally wide, and Caroline couldn’t even speak, her will no longer her own. “You will find me, wherever you are, whenever you are, you will look for us and you will find me.”

“I will find you,” she heard herself say, from so far away, and she knew she was doomed. “Wherever I am.”

“You will assist us however you can,” he continues, and Caroline could almost feel that cord tightening around her neck, like the scarf Damon used to make her wear. “Answer my questions, and do as I say when I ask you.”

And he blinked, and she was free again – only not really, she was not free and now she never would be.

Elijah, oh-so-honorable, and just as damn manipulative and cold as the rest of them.

“You son of a bitch.” She recoiled, shivering. “I _hate_ you,” Caroline told him, or thought she did, because one minute she was laying on the floor of the Mikaelson mansion, dying, Elijah hovering above her –

and the next she was alive and well, laying on something else, and  _god_ it prickled –

And when she opened her eyes there was nothing but branches and leaves and hints of blue sky, and she was sprawled on some sort of brush, the forest thick all around her.

Completely alone.

***

It did not take Caroline long to figure out what’d happened. She wasn’t dead which meant Klaus was alive, which meant that the spell had worked – and there she spared a thought to the many, many people who’d had to die to make her little trip happen – and now she was somewhere else, some _time_ else, away from everything and everyone she’d ever known and with no plan to make it back, but she was Caroline Forbes, dammit, and she would survive this like she’d survived everything else life had thrown at her. And so what if she was stranded? She’d take the long way back, and good riddance.

But first thing first –

she had to find Elijah. _Damn_. He’d told her to find him, compelled her to do so, and now she had to, even though the only thing she’d have liked to do with Elijah was to stab him through the heart. Or, failing that, get someone else to do it for her. If she closed her eyes she could feel the pull of Elijah’s command, dragging her away – somewhere, _anywhere,_ with no idea where to begin.

Still, it wasn’t much different from the bloodlust she’d felt in her first few weeks as a newly turned vampire. She’d survived that, she could do anything. Elijah, Caroline noticed, hadn’t really been specific with his instructions, and she was absolutely great at finding loopholes. So, yes, she would find him – but not right now. There was no reason to rush; she had all the time in the world.

All the time in the world.

 _However long it takes_ , she thought to herself, and smiled a bitter smile.

The day turned into night, and then the sun dawned once again; and Caroline was still walking, wandering without a destination.

She was pretty sure she was going in circles, but there was no way to know – the stupid trees were too damn thick to even walk through, every step a pain, with no way to know for sure where she was going. She had enough sense to know she should pick a direction and stick to it, but her sense of direction was limited to knowing that the sun rises in the east, and that was only doable half the time.

It was mid-morning during the second day when Caroline arrived to a hill of sort, terrain rising slightly. _That’s good, right?_ Maybe she would see where she was going if the hill went up enough. In any case, it couldn’t be worse that the green hell she was stuck in.

Thirty-odd hours lost in Middle Of Nowhere, Time Past, walking through thick foliage, surrounded by boring trees and sticky air and those damn bugs crawling all over her. Caroline already missed her home and comforts more than she’d ever thought possible; her car and her bed and her hot shower at the end of a long day. Her sneakers were good and comfortable, but still not hiking equipment. Caroline Forbes had always been an indoor kind of girl, and now her hair was flying madly everywhere and she thought she might be starting to smell. Awful.

More than anything, she missed her mother.

She cried herself to sleep that second night because, of all her lost opportunities, Liz Forbes was the greatest one. Their relationship had never even started until after she’d died, and then she’d been too busy fighting for her life every other week to take a moment for herself, too immersed in her friends’ life-or-death dramas to care about anything else. Caroline’s mind went back to those past few years, and she cried for all the moments that wouldn’t be coming back, all the things she could have done and didn’t, all the things she should’ve said and kept to herself.

“I love you, mommy.”

Her voice broke the silence, and Caroline hadn’t realized just how quite everything was until she spoke. It was the first time she heard a human voice since Elijah’s, the first time she’s heard such a loud noise since the muffled sounds of the deer she’d feed on that morning – and wouldn’t Stefan like that? “I think I ate Bambi’s mom,” she said out loud, tasting the words on her tongue, the ways they broke the uneasy quiet of the forest. “How ‘bout that, Stefan?”

This silence was so loud, she thought she might be going mad.

There were a few drops of dried blood on her pants, and it was like some itch she couldn’t scratch, because who knew when she would get the chance to clean them. “For future reference, Caroline,” and, hell, she’s starting to love the sound of her own voice; that must be why crazy loners in the movies like to talk to themselves so much. “Next time, be more delicate.”

 _Be delicate_ , she remembered Elijah’s words from just before she left. To Lucy. Something about – not sending her too early, but just after. Just _after_.

And then it clicked, finally. She’d never left; she’d been in Mystic Falls the whole time.

Like a turn-on of the metaphorical light-bulb; suddenly she understood everything. She’d woken up where Klaus’s house had been – would be, in this virgin terrain untouched by human hands – and those were the falls, she was going up to the same place she’d been countless time before, the location of dozens high school parties.

Just after.

And there was only one _after_ Elijah would care about, and Caroline scolded herself for being so, so stupid. Of course Elijah would take advantage of the occasion to look after his own interests –sending himself a message through time to watch out for Silas was all good and well, but she should’ve known he would never have stopped there. _Guidance_ , he’d told her, and in hindsight it’s was so damn _obvious_ what he’d meant. The bastard had gone the whole nine yards, and shipped her off to the dark ages.

 _Just after_ … just after their transition, and whatever mess went down back then. During the most intense, most delicate time of a vampire’s life, a confused haze of trial and error and thirst – and why not to send someone who’d already gone through it, someone he’d made damn sure couldn’t say no. Why not to get himself a minion with a thousand-odd years of future knowledge crammed into their brain, and no choice whatsoever but to do as he said.

“You know what, Elijah,” Caroline spat out, wishing so hard he could be there to hear her. “Fuck you.” And his so-called honor, and his entire, annoying family, and their stupid compulsion. “You’re worse than even Klaus, you disgusting, _manipulative_ asshole.”

It took Caroline ten full minutes before she was out of insults, and feeling only marginally better. She breathed in, slowly, and looked around, really looked around. If those were the falls – she had no way of knowing for sure until she made it to the top, not with how thick the forest around her was. Caroline tried to imagine how it must look from the sky, how the entire continent must look, deserted, endless miles of untouched growth – and failed. She’d never felt smaller than she did in that moment, or more alone.

“Right,” she told herself, shaking her head to focus. If those were the falls, then she wasn’t that far from the Lockwoods’ place. No Lockwood would live anywhere near those falls for hundreds of years, but whatever settlement there was had to be close to the water. With her mind made up, Caroline ran.

She was running like she’d never had before, too concerned about people watching, or looking human, or some security camera catching a glimpse. She ran faster than she’d had in New York, when she’d been fearing for her life, not caring that really it wasn’t the best way to move through all the stupid trees, ignoring the scratch and burns of the brushes and undergrowth ripping through her clothes, making her bleed.

Her wounds healed fast, after all, and Caroline needed to know _._

There was no sun in the sky to mark the east so late into the night and she still got lost, but her sheer speed was enough that it didn’t matter. She changed direction and ran again, and again; now that she knew where she was, it was all just a matter of time.

The sky had faded to a dull steel color when she found it, the village she didn’t know she’d been looking for. It was like something straight out the set of a period movie, and still at the same time so much different from what she’d imagined, with its too-small huts covered in dry grass.

And then then the wind changed, and she could _smell_ it.

Death; the whole place reeked of it. She strained her ear, and still couldn’t hear the sound of a single heart beating but her own. There was nothing left in this place, no one left alive.

 _Just after_ , Elijah had said, and it looked like she’d gotten there too late. Here she was, lost and alone, in the birthplace of the Originals; and they were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

This time, Caroline did not cry.

There was no need for it, really, and that wouldn’t solve anything. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and went on.

Caroline took her time walking around the village, poking inside each and every one of the huts, looking for whatever she could find. New clothes, she reminded herself, she needed new clothes and something to put them in, and maybe something to eat if she could find it – for all that she didn’t need to eat anymore, food was always _nice_. The village itself was bigger than she’d expected, but the hovels were all so _small_ , every room dark and stifling, and Caroline had to struggle to picture Klaus – I’m-so-much-better-than-you, uber-sophisticated Klaus Mikaelson – living in such a place.

She went through chests and cabinets, trying not to think for too long on what exactly she was doing. She had no reason to feel guilty; she needed clothes more than dead people would. Even if they were _weird_ clothes.

There were long tunics that went into a big leather satchel, and undertunics and knee-long woollen underwear that had Caroline double-check everything was clean before taking those, too. In went men’s trousers because they looked comfortable, and women’s dresses she couldn’t run in but were still pretty, the colors brighter than anything Caroline would have expected to see in this century. _A bit too bright maybe,_ her inner fashionista whispered in some corner of her mind _, but better than nothing_. The voice sounded exactly like Elena would have, Caroline found herself thinking, before decisively slamming the door on that particular line of thought. _Moving on_.

She took her boots from a woman’s corpse.

They were comfortable, Caroline decided, trying them on and walking a few experimental steps. Anything to distract her from the dead woman laying with her throat ripped open a few feet from her – and from the teenaged boy on her left, and the older man who must have been his father, and the little girl –

Oh _God_ the little girl –

The bodies were everywhere, men and women and children, throats torn and heads almost ripped from their bodies, and it was _awful_ , like some real-life horror movie, and Caroline wanted nothing more than recoil in disgust and walk away hating the people who’d done things, but she knew better.

She knew what the thirst felt like.

The air smelled like dried blood and scared animals and rotting bodies, and it brought her back to her own transition, how hard it had been; to the terrible feeling of not being in control. Caroline wasn’t about to feel sorry for Klaus and his crazy family, not after everything they’d done, but – maybe just a little.

After that she turned away from the dead woman and made it back to the outskirts of the village, sitting down somewhere at the edge of the woods to think.

“There’s no way back,” she said, tasting the words on her tongue, closing her eyes to hear of that felt. _No way back_. It sounded like something the hero would say in some cheesy sci-fi movie, giving a melodramatic look at the horizon and thinking of home. Except that, of course, that was a movie and the hero always got back and Caroline – Caroline wouldn’t.

The hero always got back home and she wouldn’t, and that was the way things were. _Okay_ , she thought. She’d never been one to pursue illusions, to lie to herself. It was better to sort out everything now than drag it forever.

Caroline Forbes was no action hero, and she wasn’t a witch like Lucy Bennett either. No way back meant _no way back_ , nothing, nada, niente. _Accept it and move on_ , her mother would say. _Would_ say because Liz wasn’t there anymore, not for centuries – and, Caroline realized with a chilling shiver, might even never be. Some of those movies had stayed with her, the cheesy sci-fi flicks she’d used to watch with Matt, and Caroline had learned everything about the damages of stepping on butterflies, that maybe just her mere existence would –

“Okay, Forbes,” she told herself. “You are freaking out. Stop that.”

Except, it was easier said than done. The thought had lodged into her brain and wouldn’t get out, morbid as it was – take one wrong step in the freaking Middle Ages and one thousand years down the line, who knows what could happen. It was all so ironic, she thought. Many times, Back Before when she’d still been silly naïve Caroline -the-head-cheerleader, with the low self-esteem and a crush on Matt Donovan, she’d wondered how the world would be like without her in it; and now she might even get to see it.

A world without Caroline Forbes. Would it been better or worse? Boring or simpler? Would the people be happier, would her friends, her family –

Yeah, that wasn’t helping anyone.

“Next step,” she breathed out in a whisper, in the forest that was still so _quiet_. Had the Mikaelsons scared away the animals, too? “Next step, getting the hell out of here.”

Because Elijah or no Elijah, she wasn’t about to remain rotting away literally centuries from civilization. No sir. She had to get somewhere with people, somehow.

_Rome, Paris, Tokyo._

Well, she’d always wanted to get to see Europe. Even if she had to freaking swim the entire way, which was seeming more likely every minute. Or maybe she could steal a boat. Ship. Whatever it had been that had brought Klaus’s people to Mystic Falls half a millennium before Columbus, it had to still be there. Or maybe she could just wait until Katherine’s ancestors got back, whoever they were – she could wait and hide in _their_ ship, like some Anne Rice novel. A vampires stowaway in the cargo hold, sleeping in coffins and eating rats…

Okay, that maybe was a bit too much.

 _Not right now_ , she though. _Tomorrow_. She leaned against the closest tree, using the leather bag she’d put her new clothes in as a pillow. There were beds in the huts, or sort of beds, but it wouldn’t feel right to sleep with the dead.

Caroline was still smiling at the irony of it when she fell asleep.

***

She woke to the sound of footsteps and scared whispers, and a familiar scent in the wind. _Human_ , her mind supplied, and Caroline thought nothing of it until she remembered where she was – when she was – and that there shouldn’t be anyone at all, that they were all dead.

Except that apparently wasn’t the case; she could hear the steady rhythm of dozens of beating hearts, the low murmur of blood running through their veins. She could smell the fear in the air, mixing with the stench of death, and she could feel someone moving closer.

 _Stay still_ , Caroline thought to herself. _Still and don’t move_. She’d rolled on her stomach, hiding the satchel under her body, and maybe from a distance it would be enough to pass for yet another body until whoever it was went away. Playing dead seemed safer than darting away and giving herself away, especially now.

Whoever it was, they would probably be terrified at the display in the village. _Or maybe they saw it happen_. After all she’d gone through every house, and saw how many people really had lived there, too many even for five hungry new vampires to kill. There must have been survivors, Caroline realized, cringing at how stupid she’d been. She should have it figured out that not everyone in the village had died. Klaus had even told her as much, with his ravings about doppelganger bloodlines, and she should have remembered – you can’t have a bloodline if everyone’s dead.

Survivors, terrified and angry, on alert and probably crazy with fear. Survivors scared out their minds, but blood was blood, warm and rich, and it had been _days_ –

 _Still_ , Caroline thought again, like some sort of mantra, _don’t move don’t breathe don’t move –_ but it was too late and there was a hand touching her neck, calloused fingers brushing her skin, checking for a heartbeat. She felt the person stiffen, draw in a sharp breath.

“Kuik!” There was a shout, voice too deep to belong to a woman. “Kuik!”

She knew what the survivors had been looking for; the touch of living human being. It had only been a day since Caroline had last fed, a short enough time to keep her skin warm and soft and her blood running hot, and how could these people know what she really was.

And now they would soon enough.

There were more shouts, words she didn’t recognize, and the sound of new steps, people running, coming closer. At least four of them, Caroline decided, and at least someone with an open wound. She could smell the blood and her mouth started to water, teeth turning into fangs.

_Breathe, Caroline. Breathe._

The man keep talking, muffled words she couldn’t understand, and his hand was on her shoulder now, turning her around. Caroline blinked against the light of the sun, taking in the sight in front of her.

The man who’d found her looked old, with grey hair and concern clear in his pale blue eyes. He was whispering to her, soothing sounds like one would to a child, but he was frowning as he spoke, and Caroline knew he was trying to place her, remember where he’d seen her before.

 _Nowhere_ , she could have told him, if she’d known the words. She could have said that she wasn’t one of them, a neighbor and friend and survivor, but one of the same monsters who’d slaughtered their families, killed dozens without even meaning to. _Because that’s what you are_ , Caroline wanted to tell the man. _You’re food and we’re hunters and everyone’s miserable._

The old man’s hands were gentle as they brushed against her shoulders and neck, searching for wounds. It was a small kindness, one she hadn’t even known she’d missed until now, and Caroline let out a long sigh, wishing she could pretend for a little while longer – pretend to _belong_. But there was no way she could pass for one of these people, as nice as it would have been.

She met the man’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said, slowly. For worrying, for caring, for being the first human contact she’d had in days. Then Caroline rose up to her feet, and then she was gone.

She hid further in the woods and stood still as the man’s excited shouts turned into fear. _Forath,_ they were screaming now, _Forath, forath, forath,_ disgust clear in their voices, and it wasn’t hard to guess what that word meant. Caroline found herself remembering one long day tied down to a chair, the coldness in her father’s eyes, vervain stings on her skin. She could make up a human form through the bushes – a woman, just a few years older than Caroline herself. Their eyes met, and she let out a long scream.

Caroline felt herself shiver. She’d never – people had never screamed because of her before. She was _good_ , damn it, she didn’t kill people, she just wanted to live in peace, she wasn’t evil – she wasn’t _Klaus_.

She’d never understood him, not really. Klaus and Damon alike, with their talks of dark sides and eternal damnation and all that bullshit she’d never really believed in, because she was sunny Caroline Forbes, bright and perky and _full of light_ , and she still wanted to go to college and throw parties and cook on Sundays for her mom, and Caroline – look, Caroline liked being a vampire; but still didn’t much like to _think_ of herself as one.

She liked her new agility and her strength and the endless possibilities of an eternal life, but she wasn’t some – some fairytale thing. Being. Whatever. She walked in the sun and ate eggs for breakfast and wrote school papers like a human would, with the added bonus of living forever and the hassle of bloodlust. Caroline was fine, Caroline was _great_ , and now Caroline was centuries away from home, hiding in the shadows like the monster from the stories she’d never wanted to be.

***

It was two entire days before she made it out the woods – two days of apathy and gloom and general freaking out, two days until the boredom finally outgrew any fears she might have.

Two days of fires and shouts in the night, of toxic smoke that burned her skin. The people of the village looked well prepared this time around – more prepared than Caroline would ever have expected, considering they didn’t have centuries of vampire lore to draw on. There were night patrols in the village and dry vervain leaves at every corner. They would burn it in the fires, letting out a column of smoke that made Caroline’s eyes water, and the spread the ashes in front of their doors.

Caroline watched it all and thought, _good_. It was good that these people learned how to defend themselves, as late as it was for that. She could still feel the pull of Elijah’s compulsion somewhere further north, and she knew that was where the Mikaelsons had gone. Not counting Caroline herself there were no more vampires in what would become Mystic Falls, but still these people would remember and they’d tell their children, and maybe that would be enough to save a few more lives down the road. It wasn’t enough, but it was still a start.

On the second day Caroline came out the woods, and silently told her goodbyes to the place that’d been her home for her entire life. It was time to leave. There was nothing for her here, and no way to do anything but wait and let the world pass her by, and her half-baked plan of waiting until the villagers decided to cross the ocean again go back and joining them – well, it had never been more than sleepy delusions in the first place. And there was Mikael to consider, too; unlike his children, Caroline had no idea where he was, and she didn’t much like the idea of meeting him. All in all, she could see the logic in leaving; but she would have liked the idea a lot more had it really come from her how mind…

Because the thing was, it didn’t.

 _You will find me, wherever you are_ , Elijah had told her: He’d compelled her to obey, and Caroline had to wonder just how long he’d been rehearsing these exact words in his mind for, because they were damn precise. _Wherever you are, whenever you are_. There was nothing in there that would force Caroline to drop everything and immediately go look for the Originals, transforming her into some mindless compulsion-drone if things should go wrong, but she could only keep her compulsion at bay if she kept telling herself that she would go to Elijah eventually. Caroline was trapped on a leash, making excuses to her own mind.

 _Whenever you are, you will look for us and you_ will _find me._

And apparently stopping, even for a moment – even _considering_ giving up – was not allowed. She could feel it grow stronger by the minute, tugging at her like some invisible thread, pulling her towards Elijah – and his brothers, and Rebekah, and _Klaus_.

And wasn’t that just perfect.

But there was one thing Elijah had forgotten, or maybe he hadn’t considered it at all; after all, she hadn’t been his first choice. Not her, not Caroline Forbes, she was never anyone’s first choice –

anyone but Klaus’s, for all that was worth –

she was never anyone’s first choice, not when Elena was around. And if Elijah had prepared his little speech for Elena, if he’d ever had the gall to compel perfect Elena Gilbert in the first place, then he would have expected Elena to obey. For all of her stubbornness, Elena was the kind of girl who liked to quietly wait out the storm and wait for someone to make a new way.

Caroline made her own way. In the summer after tenth grade she’d made head cheerleader because she’d gotten one up over incoming senior Shelley Humphrey over a dress code mishap, of all things. Caroline changed the rules and made new ones and she would do it again now, for the last time.

 _Look at me Elijah_ , she thought to herself, and smiled. _Screwing up all you plans_.

Caroline started to walk.


End file.
